Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

TIL the CPU count is exposed to JS. I guess that's fine? It feels nasty, but it's not really worse than all the other fingerprinting data we expose...


Also fonts you have installed, the type of connection you're using, GPU parameters, keyboard languages on your system and so much more [1]

[1] https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/


It’s also frequently wrong when running in Docker. Some of that is libuv’s fault, some of it is cgroups deciding not to mask off /proc values that are wrong in the cgroup.


I might be wrong but I think I heard that Firefox and maybe Safari bin that to a couple common values. (Or maybe that's just in the tracking-prevention mode that Tor uses?)


According to MDN Safari clamps it to 4 or 8, but Firefox does not: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/h...

I always found it annoying that CPU information was widely available and precise while memory information was not - it's clamped to 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4 or 8 GB. If you're running something memory-bound in the browser you have to be really conservative to avoid locking up the user's device (or ask them to manually specify how much memory to use). https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Device_Memo...


I was thinking of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1984333. Looks like that's only active when certain fingerprinting protection settings are on.


I think one of the third party user.js projects does that.

Maybe https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: